NPR: 'We regret the erroneous news'

NPR said late Saturday that it regrets reporting the "erroneous news" that Rep. Gabrielle Giffords had been killed in the Tucson shooting — reports that were picked up and repeated by several top news organizations.

"At two o'clock, we had two sources [saying] that the congresswoman died, the Pima County Sheriff's office and a congressman's office, and we went with those in good faith," said Anna Christopher, an NPR spokeswoman. "Soon after, as we started reporting more, we reported that she had not been killed, and we regret the erroneous news."

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Christopher added that NPR quickly corrected its report, and "we already started internal discussions into the sequence of events in deciding to report that she had been killed."

CNN, Fox News and other television outlets followed suit in the minutes after 2 p.m., and even The New York Times carried the incorrect reporting briefly, citing NPR and CNN as sources. Half an hour later, hospital officials told MSNBC that she was alive and in surgery, and within minutes the cable networks and the Times had pulled back their reports.

The wildly diverging reports reflected the challenges of breaking large and sensitive news in a high-pressure, 24-hour news cycle, said NPR's media reporter David Folkenflik on his Twitter feed.

"What we're seeing is the process of reporting breaking news, at times shakily, in real time," Folkenflik wrote. "Before cable & web, this would have played out far more out of sight. Doesn¹t exempt journalists from having to report w great care."

The erroneous report came just two days after NPR's senior vice president for news, Ellen Weiss, resigned in the wake of an outside law firm's report criticizing NPR's handing of its firing of Juan Williams.

Sarah Palin appeared to have gotten caught up in the mistaken reporting, releasing a statement on her Facebook just after 3 p.m. offering "sincere condolences to the family of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and the other victims of today¹s tragic shooting in Arizona."

A commenter on the page later added, "If CNN makes an error in reporting, then they should get the blame, not Sarah."

NPR was also the first national news organization to report the news of the shooting.

They reported it at 1 p.m., getting a head start because the wife of the Arizona Public Media News Director Peter Michaels was on the scene. He soon followed.

"They were the first ones to learn about this, and then they called NPR in Washington," Christopher said.

Michaels described what he saw to Arizona Public Media.

"I saw at least five bodies, adult bodies, strewn on the sidewalk in front of the store underneath the sign Gabrielle Giffords Congress on your Corner," he said. "I saw the congresswoman slumped in the corner with an apparent gunshot wound to the head. She was bleeding down her face. She had a red dress on. Seconds later, they took her on the gurney."

The news organizations that reported the mistaken account received some criticism on Twitter, with widely followed anonymous tweeter pourmecoffee writing, "Maybe MSM apoplectic over WikiLeaks accurate releases should focus first on things like not wrongly reporting people dead."

But others came to the media organizations' defense, with David Carr, media columnist at the New York Times, writing, "the shock at media errors on fast-moving chaotic stories sorta shocks me. Early going is always going to be fraught."

The episode had echoes of the shooting of Jim Brady, President Ronald Reagan's press secretary, who was widely, and erroneously, reported dead after being hit by a bullet intended for the president in 1981.

AP was not part of the pack that reported the mistaken information. Paul Colford, AP spokesman, wrote on his twitter feed that "Let the record show that @AP did not report that Rep. #Giffords was slain." He later added,"The @AP didn't report #Giffords' death because we lacked confirmation from someone w/ reason to know, such as 1st-hand knowledge."